So yesterday I shared the beautiful cover for Keeping Bees, done by the gorgeous mind of Ria Czerniak. She is also the gorgeous mind behind the beautiful images in the inaugural issue of The Pickled Body, an international poetry and arts quarterly I edit with Patrick Chapman.

She created a series of four images. Here is what she had to say about creating the work for the issue, and the Red Shoes theme:

"I’ve always been a huge Kate Bush fan, but it was only when I read Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes that I really got excited. It has to be one of the darkest, most profound stories I’ve read in a long time. The ‘don't be distracted by your fancy shoes when you’re meant to be praying’ moral of the story gives it its fable-like quality. The imagery Andersen creates, however, takes it in another direction; the Wonderland-like growing and shrinking of spaces, the enslaved wearer of the relentless red shoes, all lent themselves readily to visual interpretation" - Ria Czerniak